Having been longtime fans of one another's work, Michelle Blade and I thought it would be interesting to talk about our ideas, inspirations and work processes as well as our concurrent solo exhibitions at KRETS, in Sweden and Carter & Citizen in Los Angeles. The conversation, passed back and forth between email over a week, took place as follows... -Alexis Mackenzie

Alexis Mackenzie

Michelle Blade

Blade: Okay, to get the ball rolling I think I should start with a basic, but crucial, question: I've always been curious, where do you find your gorgeous source material?

Mackenzie: It all comes from used books; here in SF I mostly buy them at Green Apple Books or Adobe Books ~ so sad they are having to close! I also have a friend who is a book reseller; he keeps an eye out for books for me, and has found me some really amazing things. Most of the books I use are topical; vintage books about botany, rocks & minerals, fashion, and anatomy mostly. Lately I've been looking more for photographic source material that includes objects, such as decorative art ~ vases, frames, furniture ~ things I can build interior scenes with.

Blade: It seems like part of your process is about balancing your intuitive response to found imagery while simultaneously preplanning abstract shapes and text. Can you describe how you move back and forth between the two? When do you know a collage is completed?

Alexis Mackenzie

Michelle Blade

Mackenzie: You're completely right; for my text-based collages, finding that balance mostly consists of having a letter-shape in mind, and searching for an image that resonates with me, which I can twist into the shape I need and melds with everything else around it. It is a long process of searching, cutting, arranging, rearranging, searching, cutting, and rearranging some more. Generally I stop when it feels like a completed scene. I don't glue anything down until this happens, because if I decide to add anything it may change the balance of everything else, thus necessitating changes. My process for the abstract line collages is the complete opposite; everything is unplanned. I'll chose an existing cut-out silhouette from the millions I have floating around in stacks, one that has a shape which is interesting and compliments the found image I'm working on in a dynamic way (or is compelling enough on its own, for working on blank paper), and I just start cutting & pasting, working with the existing shapes and trying to create something resonant. It is a much more freeform approach; I sometimes think of it as drawing, in a way.

Blade: You have some really interesting text in some of your pieces. What is your process for finding or writing these phrases? Is there a story behind "Look Alive", the title for your current solo show at KRETS?

Alexis Mackenzie

Alexis Mackenzie

Mackenzie: I'm not sure I have an exact process; I think I am always just mulling over phrases in my mind, or searching them out while watching movies, reading books, observing art, listening to music, having conversations... Mostly I'm attracted to words and phrases that are sort of bittersweet; I like texts which are uplifting and thoughtful, but never saccharine, cloying, or cliched; phrases which can be interpreted as either positive or negative, depending on mood, are my favorites. They are just feelings I'm trying to capture, mostly.

"Look Alive" is one of those phrases; I love how vivid it sounds, and how it has the immediate impression of being stimulating... Under consideration, though, it is a bit of a reprimand, and a little sad ~ if someone is telling you to "look alive", it probably means you aren't really all there. So it is inspiring and depressing all at once... I think when I was working on this piece, I was telling myself that maybe it was about living in a technologically immersed culture, where many people are somewhat half-submerged in a digital world a lot of the time, and about how I sometimes miss the more analog world of not-so-long ago. But looking back, I was working on this show in the months just before my relationship with my boyfriend came to an end; so it may also have been about neither of us being really all there, and the effect that living this way was having on me.

Michelle Blade

Alexis Mackenzie

Alexis Mackenzie

Mackenzie: I have always admired your projects which are built around interactions among groups of people, creating these events which draw out a connectedness and collective energy/consciousness; many of your paintings also focus on subject matters having to do with reaching out and seeking connections of various kinds (physical & spiritual); with other people and other planes of thought; hands, people exploring nature together, palm readings, Ouija boards, fortune telling... Are facets of connectedness simply an aspect of human nature that you are exploring with your work, or is it more personal? Do you think that as people become more and more "connected" digitally, they are also becoming increasingly out of touch with the world, or do you think this has always been a human proclivity?

Blade:
I think I wander through ideas of human connectedness in couple different ways. One side of my practice is isolated, where I paint for hours on end, focusing on my inspirations in a kind of meditative state. Working this way is great because I'm quite private and I enjoy spending time alone. The other side of my practice, where I collaborate with groups, satisfies the more socially inclined part of my personality that is interested in sharing cultural rituals and collective energy. Working creativity with a group is really different from experiencing it alone; at times it's much more rewarding and surprising. Working with a group can also open you up to a unique kind of failure which is an interesting concept to grapple with. Failure embodies so much complexity- when a project fails I usually learn quite a bit more than I would have if the project had turned out polished and perfect. I think about this in regards to technology and many of the speculative conversations surrounding how it is possibly ruining the next generation's social capabilities. I can't claim to know how it is going to affect human interaction long term, but I do feel the exposure and accessibility to information, people and culture is very positive.

Mackenzie: You are currently working on "366 Days of the Apocalypse"; when did you decide you were going to do this? What is it that attracts you to the subject of the apocalypse? Do you think there is actually some form of an apocalypse about to occur (or occurring)?

Blade:
The idea for 366 Days of the Apocalypse started last year when the 2011 end times billboards made by Harold Camping started popping up all over the Bay Area, claiming that the Rapture and Judgment Day would happen on May 21st. I liked the recurring anticipation the apocalypse created among the masses so I thought it would be interesting to begin a long-term, daily painting project that would enable me to explore these themes.

Michelle Blade

Alexis Mackenzie

Alexis Mackenzie

As a child the fire and brimstone permeating apocalyptic Christian folklore was really intriguing to me. It's still pretty inspiring as far as image making goes, but in the past few years I've gravitated more toward the 2012 Mayan prophecy about the apocalypse occurring on December 21st, when their calendar ends. The Mayan prophecy claims the apocalypse will take the form of a giant cultural shift rather than the world physically ending. I would love to see a cultural shift occur, and for a moment I thought the Occupy Movement might have been part of the shift. Maybe it still is. Being alive when the sun finally explodes, or a meteor hits our planet, would also be spectacular to witness.

Mackenzie: The text for "Hanging Fire" feels like it has a lot to do with the anticipation of great change; are there things in the world, or in your life, that you are looking forward to, or perhaps dreading, or just wondering about? I like what you said about death being an ally throughout life, I really feel that's true and good thing when people use it.

Michelle Blade

Alexis Mackenzie

Alexis Mackenzie

Blade:
Hanging Fire is an expression that means to delay, or to wait and see. It refers to an unexpected delay between the triggering of a firearm and the ignition of the propellant. With so many of the works in the Carter & Citizen show being centered around the apocalypse it made sense to me. The expression pairs nicely with the idea of death as an ally as well. This concept was documented by Carlos Castaneda from his studies under shaman Don Juan. Don Juan regards death as an ally who sits with us throughout our life, forcing us to consider the inevitable and live accordingly. Picturing death as a presence that literally sits next to me, helps me imagine a vision of the past, present and future in sync with the persistent and imminent transition of death. I think it's a really positive tool.

Blade: Death seems to be a repeating character in some of your collages as well. What attracts you to the idea of Death as an Ally? Do you have other characters in your work?

Michelle Blade

Mackenzie: Mortality is just an inescapable theme in some ways; I think the prospect of our own imminent deaths can be a great motivator to do and appreciate all we can, while we can, if one considers things from that perspective. It sweetens an experience, in its own dark way, by causing the moment itself to shine brighter. I guess Death is a foil. It is also the most mysterious of all life events, since there is no way of knowing what the experience of dying is truly like, or what lies on the other side of it. We have no irrefutable facts. It is the only truly unanswerable question anyone can ask; entire religions and cultures are founded upon purporting to answer the question; I think they succeed in part because of how deep our curiosity and need to know is. Anyway, I think those are some of the reasons Death as a theme is such a draw... As an ally, it fulfills my need for things to have a duality. I really believe in the need for all forms of lightness to be balanced by a darkness; there are no highs without lows, no beauty without flaws; we need sad moments to appreciate how wonderful the joyous ones are. These are just basic concepts I try to explore visually, trying to draw out nuances of feelings and highlight moments when one might consider them, in the course of living. I try to use the fear of death and the sadder, uglier moments in life to highlight everything else.

Mackenzie: I love what you said about failure; its complexities and how you learned from these experiences more than from the projects that succeeded. It reminds me of that Beckett quote, "Fail better." What is one of your favorite failures and what did you take away from it?

Alexis Mackenzie

Alexis Mackenzie

Blade: A couple years ago I hosted an event called the "Trust Fall / Peace Sign" at Dolores Park during a peace rally. My idea for the event was to invite people from the crowd to stand in the shape of a peace sign. Once the shape was filled in, I instructed the standing participants do a trust fall exercise; falling into the arms of the person behind them while simultaneously catching the person in front of them. In my mind this action was going to look like a beautiful choreographed human domino in the shape of a peace sign. I explained to the crowd that I was going to climb a nearby hill to shoot video and that when I got to the top I would give them a signal to fall when everything was ready. The signal would be me raising my hands above my head and letting them fall to my side. When I gave my signal to the participants people slowly started to fall in a piecemeal fashion, others flapped their arms up and down imitating me, and some looked around confused while others tried shouting directions to help recover the already failed event. I watched all of this chaos from the hill above, loving every bit of it. The event was a huge failure but what struck me in that moment was how beautiful the symbology of the event was. It mirrored so many facets of our human struggle for peace- at times chaotic and flailing, but interesting, and filled with good intentions.

Michelle Blade

Alexis Mackenzie

Michelle Blade holds a BA from Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles and an MFA from the California College of the Arts, San Francisco. Her work has been featured at Western Exhibitions (Chicago), Jack Hanley (San Francisco), Triple Base (San Francisco), the San Jose ICA, Roberts & Tilton (Los Angeles), Carl Berg Gallery (Los Angeles), Bravin Lee Gallery (NYC), Space 1026 (Philadelphia), Union Gallery (London), V1 Gallery (Copenhagen), and the Akademie der Bildenden Künste (Stüttgart, Germany). She is a 2007 recipient of the Murphy-Cadogan Fellowship, A 2X2 Pro Arts Grant, an Alternative Exposure SOEX Grant, and was a SF MOMA Seca finalist in 2011. Blade lives and works in San Francisco, Ca.

Alexis Mackenzie's work has been exhibited internationally, including solo exhibitions in San Francisco, Chicago, and Los Angeles. She holds a BFA from Tufts University/School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Her work has been reviewed in the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the San Francisco Chronicle, among others, and has appeared in numerous publications, including Zeit Magazin, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, doingbird, and Yen Magazine.

We haven't been featuring many interviews as of late. Let's change that up as we check in with a few local San Francisco artists like Kevin Earl Taylor here whom we studio visited back in 2009 (PHOTOS & VIDEO). It's been awhile, Kevin...

If you like guns and boobs, head on over to the Shooting Gallery; just don't expect the work to be all cheap ploys and hot chicks. With Make Stuff by Peter Gronquist (Portland) in the main space and Morgan Slade's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow in the project space, there is plenty spectacle to be had, but if you look just beyond it, you might actually get something out of the shows.

Fifty24SF opened Street Anatomy, a new solo show by Austrian artist Nychos a week ago last Friday night. He's been steadily filling our city with murals over the last year, with one downtown on Geary St. last summer, and new ones both in the Haight and in Oakland within the last few weeks, but it was really great to see his work up close and in such detail.

Congrats on our buddies at Needles and Pens on being open and rad for 11 years now. Mission Local did this little short video featuring Breezy giving a little heads up on what Needles and Pens is all about.

Matt Wagner recently emailed over some photos from The Hellion Gallery in Tokyo, who recently put together a show with AJ Fosik (Portland) called Beast From a Foreign Land. The gallery gave twelve of Fosik's sculptures to twelve Japanese artists (including Hiro Kurata who is currently showing in our group show Salt the Skies) to paint, burn, or build upon.

Backwoods Gallery in Melbourne played host to a huge group exhibition a couple of weeks back, with "Gold Blood, Magic Weirdos" Curated by Melbourne artist Sean Morris. Gold Blood brought together 25 talented painters, illustrators and comic artists from Australia, the US, Singapore, England, France and Spain - and marked the end of the Magic Weirdos trilogy, following shows in Perth in 2012 and London in 2013.

San Francisco based Fecal Pal Jeremy Fish opened his latest solo show Hunting Trophies at LA's Mark Moore Gallery last week to massive crowds and cabin walls lined with imagery pertaining to modern conquest and obsession.

Well, John Felix Arnold III is at it again. This time, he and Carolyn LeBourgios packed an entire show into the back of a Prius and drove across the country to install it at Superchief Gallery in NYC. I met with him last week as he told me about the trip over delicious burritos at Taqueria Cancun (which is right across the street from FFDG and serves what I think is the best burrito in the city) as the self proclaimed "Only overweight artist in the game" spilled all the details.

Ever Gold opened a new solo show by NYC based Henry Gunderson a couple Saturday nights ago and it was literally packed. So packed I couldn't actually see most of the art - but a big crowd doesn't seem like a problem. I got a good laugh at what I would call the 'cock climbing wall' as it was one of the few pieces I could see over the crowd. I haven't gotten a chance to go back and check it all out again, but I'm definitely going to as the paintings that I could get a peek at were really high quality and intruiguing. You should do the same.

The paintings in the show are each influenced by a musician, ranging from Freddy Mercury, to Madonna, to A Tribe Called Quest and they are so stylistically consistent with each musician's persona that they read as a cohesive body of work with incredible variation. If you told me they were each painted by a different person, I would not hesitate to believe you and it's really great to see a solo show with so much variety. The show is fun, poppy, very well done, and absolutely worth a look and maybe even a listen.

With rising rent in SF and knowing mostly other young artists without capitol, I desired a way to live rent free, have a space to do my craft, and get to see more of the world. Inspired by the many historical artists who have longed similar longings I discovered the beauty of artist residencies. Lilo runs Adhoc Collective in Vienna which not only has a fully equipped artists creative studio, but an indoor halfpipe, and private artist quarters. It was like a modern day castle or skate cathedral. It exists in almost a utopic state, totally free to those that apply and come with a real passion for both art and skateboarding

I just wanted to share with you a piece I recently finished which took me 4 years to complete. Titled "How To Lose Yourself Completely (The September Issue)", it consists of a copy of the September 2007 issue of Vogue magazine (the issue they made the documentary about) with all faces masked with a sharpie, and everything else entirely whited out. 840 pages of fun. -Bryan Schnelle

Jeremy Fish opens Hunting Trophies tonight, Saturday April 5th, at the Los Angeles based Mark Moore Gallery. The show features new work from Fish inside the "hunting lodge" where viewers climb inside the head of the hunter and explore the history of all the animals he's killed.

Beautiful piece entitled "The Albatross and the Shipping Container", Ink on Paper, Mounted to Panel, 47" Diameter, by San Francisco based Martin Machado now on display at FFDG. Stop in Saturday (1-6pm) to view the group show "Salt the Skies" now running through April 19th. 2277 Mission St. at 19th.

For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to quit my job, move out of my house, leave everything and travel again. So on August 21, 2013 I pushed a canoe packed full of gear into the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Lake Itasca, Minnesota, along with four of my best friends. Exactly 100 days later, I arrived at a marina near the Gulf of Mexico in a sailboat.

I don't think at this point it needs to be written since the last update to Fecal Face was a long time ago, but...

I, John Trippe, have put this baby Fecal Face to bed. I'm now focusing my efforts on running ECommerce at DLX which I'm very excited about... I guess you can't take skateboarding out of a skateboarder.

It was a great 15 years, and most of that effort can still be found within the site. Click around. There's a lot of content to explore.

I'm not sure how many people are lucky enough to have The San Francisco Giants 3 World Series trophies put on display at their work for the company's employees to enjoy during their lunch break, but that's what happened the other day at Deluxe. So great.

When works of art become commodities and nothing else, when every endeavor becomes “creative” and everybody “a creative,” then art sinks back to craft and artists back to artisans—a word that, in its adjectival form, at least, is newly popular again. Artisanal pickles, artisanal poems: what’s the difference, after all? So “art” itself may disappear: art as Art, that old high thing. Which—unless, like me, you think we need a vessel for our inner life—is nothing much to mourn.

Hard-working artisan, solitary genius, credentialed professional—the image of the artist has changed radically over the centuries. What if the latest model to emerge means the end of art as we have known it? --continue reading

"[Satire] is important because it brings out the flaws we all have and throws them up on the screen of another person," said Turner. “How they react sort of shows how important that really is.” Later, he added, "Charlie took a hit for everybody." -read on

NYC --- A new graffiti abatement program put forth by the police commissioner has beat cops carrying cans of spray paint to fill in and cover graffiti artists work in an effort to clean up the city --> Many cops are thinking it's a waste of resources, but we're waiting to see someone make a project of it. Maybe instructions for the cops on where to fill-in?

The NYPD is arming its cops with cans of spray paint and giving them art-class-style lessons to tackle the scourge of urban graffiti, The Post has learned.

Shootings are on the rise across the city, but the directive from Police Headquarters is to hunt down street art and cover it with black, red and white spray paint, sources said... READ ON

We haven't been featuring many interviews as of late. Let's change that up as we check in with a few local San Francisco artists like Kevin Earl Taylor here whom we studio visited back in 2009 (PHOTOS & VIDEO). It's been awhile, Kevin...

If you like guns and boobs, head on over to the Shooting Gallery; just don't expect the work to be all cheap ploys and hot chicks. With Make Stuff by Peter Gronquist (Portland) in the main space and Morgan Slade's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow in the project space, there is plenty spectacle to be had, but if you look just beyond it, you might actually get something out of the shows.

Fifty24SF opened Street Anatomy, a new solo show by Austrian artist Nychos a week ago last Friday night. He's been steadily filling our city with murals over the last year, with one downtown on Geary St. last summer, and new ones both in the Haight and in Oakland within the last few weeks, but it was really great to see his work up close and in such detail.

Congrats on our buddies at Needles and Pens on being open and rad for 11 years now. Mission Local did this little short video featuring Breezy giving a little heads up on what Needles and Pens is all about.

Matt Wagner recently emailed over some photos from The Hellion Gallery in Tokyo, who recently put together a show with AJ Fosik (Portland) called Beast From a Foreign Land. The gallery gave twelve of Fosik's sculptures to twelve Japanese artists (including Hiro Kurata who is currently showing in our group show Salt the Skies) to paint, burn, or build upon.

Backwoods Gallery in Melbourne played host to a huge group exhibition a couple of weeks back, with "Gold Blood, Magic Weirdos" Curated by Melbourne artist Sean Morris. Gold Blood brought together 25 talented painters, illustrators and comic artists from Australia, the US, Singapore, England, France and Spain - and marked the end of the Magic Weirdos trilogy, following shows in Perth in 2012 and London in 2013.

San Francisco based Fecal Pal Jeremy Fish opened his latest solo show Hunting Trophies at LA's Mark Moore Gallery last week to massive crowds and cabin walls lined with imagery pertaining to modern conquest and obsession.

Well, John Felix Arnold III is at it again. This time, he and Carolyn LeBourgios packed an entire show into the back of a Prius and drove across the country to install it at Superchief Gallery in NYC. I met with him last week as he told me about the trip over delicious burritos at Taqueria Cancun (which is right across the street from FFDG and serves what I think is the best burrito in the city) as the self proclaimed "Only overweight artist in the game" spilled all the details.

Ever Gold opened a new solo show by NYC based Henry Gunderson a couple Saturday nights ago and it was literally packed. So packed I couldn't actually see most of the art - but a big crowd doesn't seem like a problem. I got a good laugh at what I would call the 'cock climbing wall' as it was one of the few pieces I could see over the crowd. I haven't gotten a chance to go back and check it all out again, but I'm definitely going to as the paintings that I could get a peek at were really high quality and intruiguing. You should do the same.

The paintings in the show are each influenced by a musician, ranging from Freddy Mercury, to Madonna, to A Tribe Called Quest and they are so stylistically consistent with each musician's persona that they read as a cohesive body of work with incredible variation. If you told me they were each painted by a different person, I would not hesitate to believe you and it's really great to see a solo show with so much variety. The show is fun, poppy, very well done, and absolutely worth a look and maybe even a listen.

With rising rent in SF and knowing mostly other young artists without capitol, I desired a way to live rent free, have a space to do my craft, and get to see more of the world. Inspired by the many historical artists who have longed similar longings I discovered the beauty of artist residencies. Lilo runs Adhoc Collective in Vienna which not only has a fully equipped artists creative studio, but an indoor halfpipe, and private artist quarters. It was like a modern day castle or skate cathedral. It exists in almost a utopic state, totally free to those that apply and come with a real passion for both art and skateboarding

I just wanted to share with you a piece I recently finished which took me 4 years to complete. Titled "How To Lose Yourself Completely (The September Issue)", it consists of a copy of the September 2007 issue of Vogue magazine (the issue they made the documentary about) with all faces masked with a sharpie, and everything else entirely whited out. 840 pages of fun. -Bryan Schnelle

Jeremy Fish opens Hunting Trophies tonight, Saturday April 5th, at the Los Angeles based Mark Moore Gallery. The show features new work from Fish inside the "hunting lodge" where viewers climb inside the head of the hunter and explore the history of all the animals he's killed.

Beautiful piece entitled "The Albatross and the Shipping Container", Ink on Paper, Mounted to Panel, 47" Diameter, by San Francisco based Martin Machado now on display at FFDG. Stop in Saturday (1-6pm) to view the group show "Salt the Skies" now running through April 19th. 2277 Mission St. at 19th.

For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to quit my job, move out of my house, leave everything and travel again. So on August 21, 2013 I pushed a canoe packed full of gear into the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Lake Itasca, Minnesota, along with four of my best friends. Exactly 100 days later, I arrived at a marina near the Gulf of Mexico in a sailboat.

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